Keith Olbermann Tries To Save ESPN From Itself–We Live-blog It

According to a good deal of sports fans, however, the network is also destroying sports culture. Looking at the network’s flagship show, Sportscenter, you can see the company blacklist certain sports, create stories out of nothing, and generally cater to the lowest common denominator of sports ‘follower’. But believe it or not, ESPN wasn’t always like that.

Once upon a time, they had an anchor named Keith Olbermann. He was smart, and funny, and most importantly knew what the hell he was talking about. KO also liked to ruffle feathers and before long found himself out at ESPN and talking politics instead of sports. Monday night, though, he made his triumphant return to the sports airwaves, as ESPN 2 launched Olbermann in an attempt to save the network from themselves. Let’s review what happened on the first episode of ESPN’s return to sanity.

00: Olberman is back on ESPN. I’m excited and expecting something that mixes ESPN’s resources with the intellectual side that they famously struggle with.

09: KO tells me to pretend to be Rex Ryan for a moment. Immediately eat some ice cream, check out some foot fetish videos and get an embarrassing tattoo. (I didn’t do any of those things. OK maybe one, but I’ll let you guess which.)

10: Hey Keith, I didn’t know Rex Ryan isn’t the best public speaker. Can you explain more of this to me?

12: KO says locker room/beat reporters should have the balls to ask direct questions. Easier said than done when he’s sitting in a studio. The few times I’ve been in a pro locker room, it’s intimidating. You have to ask a question that serves your story while at the same time doesn’t seem idiotic or is too direct/combative to get answered.

14: Jason Whitlock is the first guest on an intellectual show…ok then.

15: The Wire reference! Ok, Whitlock literally just said The Wire, but I’ll take it.

15: Whitlock is wearing a denim blazer while calling the newspaper industry incompetent. His claim is technology forces a beat reporter to create a story rather than just report one.

16: “I’m not an anti-capitalist, but….” Exactly what I want to hear on a sports show

17: Whitlock says his solution is for an outside entity like Deadspin to exist and watch the watchers. I wonder if that’s why this show is trying to be like them?

18: KO thinks every journalist should spend a day as a subject, so we can see how things are reported. Interesting point, if kind of elementary as far as I’m concerned. Scrutiny comes with celebrity; I’m not saying you automatically surrender your right to personal privacy, but you have to know what you’re getting into.

19: The role of African Americans in sports comes up. Cringing begins because it’s Whitlock.

20: Whitlock wants black athletes to be more like Jackie Robinson and care more about racial advancement than building themselves up. I get his point, but saying that makes it seem like they’re the only selfish athletes which in itself is kind of stereotypical.

24: Fan picks his nose, bad joke about the sun (“The sun is an issue, which it has been since the dinosaurs”), and a glorified blooper reel of Royals dropping pop-ups. My mind is expanding at a dangerous rate due to all this intellectual sports discussion.

25: Dancing KC camera man

25: Derek Jeter is old! Let’s make 3 jokes about that within 4 minutes.

29: Matt Harvey’s hurt. I feel legitimately bad about that. If you like the Mets, I’ll buy you a beer or something. Seriously.

29: The Patriots are trying to get money back from the Aaron Hernandez contract. “Hide the money inside a birthday cake,” advises KO.

30: Clip of KO on Sportscenter from ’94. Gets awkward points for referring to a golfer being on the grassy knoll of the course.

33. Super Bowl selection committee is the one of the worst sports people in the sports world. I’ve seen this segment somewhere before.

34: In response to the Super Bowl being in the Meadowlands this January (note, it’s cold in January in the North East and the Farmers’ Almanac is predicting snow) K.O compared it to a student registering for a 7 am class and thinking ‘that’s months from now.” Not the greatest analogy, but it makes sense and I’ve done that before so I’ll let it slide.

35: Showed a misspelled high school banner and misspelled tattoo, both of which would have been really funny if they weren’t on Deadspin already. TV can’t be rival the Internet in that regard. Not much wacky sports/pop culture stuff is going to break close enough to an 11 pm show for Olbermann to beat Deadspin or even blogs linking to Deadspin to it.

36: The Astros are reportedly making a profit despite being awful, but deny it. Not sure who to believe, since I once asked Lou Lamorillo about the Forbes revenue numbers for the Devils and he said they’re nothing like the real thing. Could be an interesting point to discuss, if it wasn’t crammed into a minute and talked about over haunted house organ music.

40: Mark Cuban is guest #2 (Why?). We also learn he was once a disco dancer. Ok then.

41: Cuban, classy as ever is wearing a t-shirt of the team he owns. He makes a Skip Bayless joke, KO makes an A-Rod joke.

41: Why do I care what Cuban says about baseball? His greatest connection is trying to buy a team and getting shut down. He could either be awesome and say things no one else has the balls to say or default to glorified sour grapes.

01:We’re in overtime here. More highlights, this time without a witty name. They were also shown about 40 minutes ago. Jokes are recycled.

03: Another video I’ve seen before. KO jokes that college tuition is $4 M annually. If only he knew about NYU. Shed one single tear.

03: Ends with good night and good luck. He’ll need it more than me.

The Final Take: I’m really not sure what I watched. I was expecting something kind of Sportscentery, but mostly intellectual and edgy. KO was supposed to say things that wouldn’t fly on other ESPN shows. He did that, but not how I expected.

ESPN obviously got the memo that Deadspin represents the opposite side of the spectrum: the website is funny, irreverent, and smart to the network’s vanilla pandering. Deadspin, though, is also a website. “Olbermann” is a nightly TV show, so any attempts to throw in some viral videos and things like that fail unless the crew is extremely good or extremely lucky. Also, pointing out fans picking their nose during a highlight is kind of clunky; if I’m watching clips of the game, I want to know about the game. Olbermann can be smart and he can be funny, but cramming them together is doesn’t work well for late night sports TV.

As for the guests, I was disappointed due to the fact that KO is known for selecting who will appear on his show. Whitlock and Cuban frankly seem more troll-y than intellectually stimulating. I’ll grant them that a few really intriguing points were brought up, but the show’s format didn’t allow them to be expanded upon. Since then, though, the guests have been better. Tony Kornheiser usually makes things better.

On the whole, Olbermann was a step in the right direction for ESPN, but still came across like the network trying to hard. The fact is is that ESPN is still an entertainment business, and I can almost hear someone in a Bristol boardroom saying, “Hey people like Deadspin and think we’re dumbing sports down. Let’s bring back Keith Olbermann (smart) and have him show some funny videos (you know like Deadspin does).” To ESPN, programming choices will always be about reaching out to new demographics. Now it’s gotten some pretty good reviews and really doesn’t have much competition in the time slot, so there’s hope that Olbermann and his staff can reach above that.

I really want KO to succeed, primarily because I don’t want to be nauseated every time someone turns on ESPN. I can chalk up some of Monday to first show hiccups, but I’m not optimistic for the long term. I think he can revive his sports career, but ESPN probably isn’t the place for that.